The scarcity of water resources in both arid and temperate countries alike is one of the most pervasive natural resource allocation problems facing water users and policy makers. In the EU this has been recognised in the recent work on the Water Framework Directive. In arid countries this...

Since the 1990s flood risk and the effects of flooding episodes have reemerged as an important natural hazard concern in central and northern Europe. These concerns have also been exacerbated as a result of widespread and increasing awareness of global climate change, and significant wetland...

Agriculture contributes negative and positive externalities to society, that is, beneficial and detrimental changes in human wellbeing to third parties for which they are not generally compensated or charged. Beneficial externalities include the creation of amenity and landscape and negative...

Discussions about applied Cost Benefit Analysis are incomplete without the thorny issue of discounting emerging at some point. Indeed, since the calculation of Net Present Values (NPV), and hence the efficiency of a project or policy, hinges so crucially upon the level of the discount rate...

This paper reviews the arguments for and the implications of employing Declining Discount Rates (DDRs) in CBA and in the analysis of economic growth and sustainability. We show that there exist several growth models in which a relationship has been found between the long-run equilibrium under...

Concepts, theoretical principles and econometric approaches are interrelated throughout the chapters of this book, but generalizations are not so straightforward. One reason why that is although the range of empirical contexts represented is broad, the crops and countries studied were selected...

The scarcity of water resources in both arid and temperate countries alike is one of the most pervasive natural resource allocation problems facing water users and policy-makers. In arid countries this problem is faced each day in the myriad of conflicts that surround its use.Water scarcity is a...

A major environmental tragedy of modern times is the widespread arsenic contamination of shallow drinking water wells in rural Bangladesh which went unrecognized for years. Large numbers of people are now starting to show a range of symptoms long associated with chronic arsenic exposure. Rural...

Wetlands are a crucial component of water resources, providing several ecological functions and services, including flood attenuation, groundwater recharge and water quality maintenance, as well as conservation of biodiversity and provision of recreational activities. In Cyprus, an arid country...

Air quality affects human�s well being in various ways. Air providing the most important life-support function sustains human health and enables the existence of all ecosystems. Although clean air is considered to be a basic requirement for human health and well-being,...